Love and Money in the online world
JDate is an institution for Toronto jews looking for a besheret (that's 'soul mate' for the Ivrit- uninclined... like me). Truth be told- It's how I met my Beady Eyed friend, but I won't hold that against JDate.
I was doing some International Business Studying the other day by reading the business section of Ha'aretz online and they had an article about the performance of Spark Networks (the proprietors of JDate). A pdf copy of the article is here.
Now- it probably comes of little surprise that I have an interest in technology, and particularly the performance of online companies. It's my opinion that the online world is no longer an emerging market- in fact, for online companies, it's a mature market (saturated, fierce competition, high branding equity value, minimal barriers to access and egress- in a lot of ways, a great deal like perfectly competitive environments; at least in theory). Specifically- Sparks Network could be considered beyond just the scope of industry to the scope of target, which would make them a B2C service- which traditionally is entitled to a higher gearing ratio, however, they are also an online company, which typically characterized by lower gearing ratios.
Additionally- while the data in the article is minimal, it was apparent that in order to cover the increase of COGs, it has 3 options; 1) Shoestring 2) Debt finance 3) Equity Finance.
Given that it just went through some rounds of equity- and shoestringing can cripple any growing company, the last option is Long Term Debt
I don't know. I just found it really interesting. Where's Harvard to make a business case when you really one?
I was doing some International Business Studying the other day by reading the business section of Ha'aretz online and they had an article about the performance of Spark Networks (the proprietors of JDate). A pdf copy of the article is here.
Now- it probably comes of little surprise that I have an interest in technology, and particularly the performance of online companies. It's my opinion that the online world is no longer an emerging market- in fact, for online companies, it's a mature market (saturated, fierce competition, high branding equity value, minimal barriers to access and egress- in a lot of ways, a great deal like perfectly competitive environments; at least in theory). Specifically- Sparks Network could be considered beyond just the scope of industry to the scope of target, which would make them a B2C service- which traditionally is entitled to a higher gearing ratio, however, they are also an online company, which typically characterized by lower gearing ratios.
Additionally- while the data in the article is minimal, it was apparent that in order to cover the increase of COGs, it has 3 options; 1) Shoestring 2) Debt finance 3) Equity Finance.
Given that it just went through some rounds of equity- and shoestringing can cripple any growing company, the last option is Long Term Debt
I don't know. I just found it really interesting. Where's Harvard to make a business case when you really one?
posted by Mike at 5/04/2006 09:27:00 a.m.
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